Silent turning point: The disapproval factors that bring a conservative project closer in Mexico

Introduction

In Mexico, security is one of the main metrics used to evaluate government performance. For Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, this has also been the first internal turning point: although her administration reports specific advances—such as a 25.97% decrease in homicides—the persistence of crimes like extortion and disappearances keeps the feeling of insecurity at high levels. Furthermore, there are warnings about possible underreporting, which widens the gap between official data and the daily experiences of citizens.

The protests of November 15, led by young people from Generation Z , expressed discontent with insecurity, lack of opportunities, and the government's response. Sheinbaum claimed that these mobilizations had been instigated by right-wing actors and amplified by bots , generating further debate about the legitimacy and political origins of the marches. While not constituting an institutional crisis, these events reveal a period of discontent focused on the country's most sensitive issue.

This moment coincides with a regional shift toward conservative projects, driven by demands for order and frustration with the security performance of progressive governments. While Mexico is not facing a collapse, it falls within this pattern. This analysis argues that Sheinbaum's presidency could become a turning point, fostering a shift toward a conservative project in Mexico, due to the growing centrality of insecurity, the perception of insufficient results, and the regional context.

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Concepts

Salience : A concept that denotes the importance an actor attaches to an issue, which may be based on its political impact, its sensitivity, or the attention it receives in key constituencies. This concept has an actor-specific component and an issue-specific component (Warntjen, 2011, citing Hinich and Munger, 1997; Laver, 2001; MacLean and MacMillan, 2009).

Security : An objective state of affairs in which the subject is free from danger. Traditionally, the subject of security is the nation-state, although non-traditional views focus on non-state actors (Blanchette, 2020).

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Safety salience: Perceptions, data, and structural tensions

In Mexico, the security situation has taken on exceptional prominence, influencing citizens' evaluation of the federal government. While President Claudia Sheinbaum has highlighted a "very significant decrease" (El País, 2025), reporting 25,712 homicides in her first year in office—a 25.97% decrease compared to the 34,732 homicides in the first 12 months of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's presidency—this figure raises technical concerns about potential underreporting (Torres, 2025). As Lisa Sánchez, director of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (United Mexico Against Crime), explained, the data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) is compiled from state reports that may contain significant errors, resulting in inconsistencies with the INEGI figures, which are based on death certificates. For example, while the SESNSP recorded 30,060 homicides in 2024, INEGI reported 33,241 during the same period (Torres, 2025). This discrepancy, reinforced by Mexican specialists such as Ernesto López Portillo, fuels the public perception that official figures do not fully reflect everyday reality.

This statistical discrepancy becomes even more apparent when observing localized phenomena: the decrease in homicides is not uniform across the country, and there are states where homicides have increased dramatically. In Sinaloa, for example, 1,815 homicides were recorded during Sheinbaum's first year in office, a 102.79% increase compared to López Obrador's first year, in a context of escalating internal disputes within the Sinaloa Cartel following the arrest of "El Mayo" Zambada (Torres, CNN, 2025). Added to this is the sustained growth of crimes that directly affect the perception of security, such as extortion and the increase in the number of missing persons, which reinforces the idea of a pervasive insecurity that feels closer than the total number of homicides.

Source: Prepared by the author using data from the National Urban Security Survey (ENSU)

Public perception confirms this trend, as the National Urban Security Survey (ENSU) found that 63% of Mexicans reported feeling unsafe in their city during the third quarter of 2025, a considerable increase compared to the first year of Sheinbaum's presidency, when the same period saw historically low figures of 58.6%. The salience of security, in analytical terms, means that an issue becomes the central point of reference for evaluating the government. Warntjen (2012) argues that salience combines the objective importance of the issue with its specific weight for political actors. In Mexico, both components converge: insecurity affects daily life and dominates public debate.

The November 15th march, led by Generation Z youth —those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s—is a direct expression of this salience. As one student interviewed by The New York Times noted : “This movement represents not just one thing. It represents everything: injustice, insecurity, the disappeared, the lack of education, the lack of jobs” (Rodríguez, 2025). The demonstration was interpreted not as an outburst organized by party structures, but as a symptom of multifaceted social discontent, amplified by digital networks and a generational feeling that the state is not responding with the expected speed.

This atmosphere emerged and intensified after the assassination of independent mayor Carlos Manzo in Uruapan, an event that, according to Cañizález (2025), acted as a symbolic trigger for the mobilization. The mayor had publicly denounced the lack of state support in the face of criminal threats, which subsequently became a paradigmatic case of institutional absence. Taken together, these events illustrate that security in Mexico has become a decisive criterion for political legitimacy, even above technical or administrative advances.

Presidential approval rating, thematic fatigue, and political vulnerability

Claudia Sheinbaum's overall approval rating remained relatively high for much of her first year. National polls, such as those conducted by El Financiero, placed her approval rating around 73%, while global measurements by Morning Consult ranked her among the most popular leaders in 2024–2025. However, this trend has abruptly changed. According to Morning Consult (2025), the mayor's approval rating fell from 62% in November 2024 to just 41% in November 2025, while her disapproval rating rose to 53%. This data shows a proportional variability between the positive approval ratings at the beginning of the presidential term and the increase in disapproval in more recent data. This 21-point drop is especially significant because the same poll had historically been used by the federal administration, particularly that of López Obrador, to project high levels of popularity, making it difficult to dismiss in this context.

Source: Prepared by the author using data from The Morning Consult (2025)

The decline in the president's image coincides with a marked drop in the thematic components of public evaluation. This is demonstrated in the favorability poll conducted by the newspaper El Financiero last October, where Sheinbaum has over 70% approval (Moreno, 2025). Of the one thousand respondents, 37% approved of the president's handling of security, while 59% rated it negatively. Regarding the fight against organized crime, positive opinions fall to 12%, compared to 85% negative. This disconnect between overall approval and thematic performance reveals what, in political analysis, is considered a structural vulnerability: a government with personal support, but weakened in the area where citizens focus their attention.

Furthermore, the government's response to the protests reinforces this vulnerability. Sheinbaum declared that the marches had been instigated by right-wing actors and amplified by bots , which raised a dispute about the authenticity and motivation of the mobilizations and, thus, delegitimized the protest of the 17,000 attendees (Torres, 2025). This statement, while politically understandable, can also be interpreted as an attempt to delegitimize genuine expressions of social discontent, especially among young people. Thus, the central political challenge for Sheinbaum is that she “no longer faces an institutional opposition [...] but a diffuse, digital, and faceless social opposition,” which is much more difficult to negotiate with or neutralize (Delgado, 2025, as cited in Cañizález, 2025).

In this context, the combination of declining approval ratings, criticism of security management, and high-impact events—such as the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan—fuels a narrative in which presidential stability ceases to be a buffer and becomes a precarious situation. This erosion does not imply a crisis of governance, but it does create a scenario in which citizens could reassess their political leanings if they perceive that insecurity remains unresolved. Data from the National Public Security System (SESNSP) on homicides and extortion exemplify this dual tension: an overall downward trend coexisting with regional hotspots of extreme violence.

This political climate opens the door to alternative interpretations and proposals, especially when the main focus of evaluation is an area where citizens perceive deterioration. Comparative experience shows that progressive governments face accelerated erosion of support when security is at the center of the debate, even if they maintain high approval ratings in other areas. Mexico is approaching this pattern: a president with solid support, but facing erosion on the most decisive issue of the contemporary political system. This internal erosion becomes even more significant when one considers that Mexico is not an isolated case, but rather part of a broader regional pattern.

The Latin American conservative turn as a general framework for the Mexican scenario

The analysis of the Mexican situation cannot be separated from the Latin American context, where a regional shift toward conservative or “iron fist” projects is evident, capitalizing on widespread frustration with insecurity and economic stagnation. Samper Pizano (2025) identifies three structural factors behind this shift: the expansion of organized crime, frustration with the inability of progressive governments to reduce violence, and the search for leaders who project strength and order. In this narrative, policies such as “hugs, not bullets” (a slogan against the Mexican war) or proposals for negotiated peace—including the Colombian “total peace”—have been perceived as insufficient compared to models like that of Nayib Bukele, who embodies the punitive response most admired in the region (Reid, 202, citing Latinobarómetro, 2024).

On the economic front, Latin America has experienced a decade of low or negative growth, a situation that has particularly affected progressive governments that promised state reactivation and redistribution. Countries like Brazil and Colombia faced financial skepticism, while leaders like Javier Milei in Argentina have capitalized on disillusionment, becoming proponents of alternative models based on aggressive stabilization, austerity, or deregulatory reforms (Reid, 2025). This accumulated frustration has fostered an ideological shift: a significant increase in the number of people identifying with right-wing positions.

Mexico appears embedded in this regional political climate. Although its economy has shown relative stability, the expectations generated by the narrative of the Fourth Transformation (the name of López Obrador's leftist political project) clash with a persistent perception of insecurity. The convergence of fear, social fatigue, and thematic exhaustion—characteristic elements of the Latin American conservative shift—opens a space for right-wing forces to articulate an alternative based on order, authority, and the restoration of public safety. As Rovira explains, “the exhaustion of many leftist governments has paved the way for their rejection at the polls, thus creating space for the growth of actors from both the conventional right [...] and the far right” (Rovira, 2023). In fact, Sheinbaum's assertion about the presence of right-wing actors behind the marches suggests that these sectors are already attempting to capitalize on the moment.

Another key element of the regional shift is the transformation of access to information. As Samper Pizano explains, digital politics has become a space where the right has been able to adapt its communication more effectively. This generates a segregation of individuals into groups where only like-minded ideas and opinions are expressed, avoiding contact with divergent perspectives—a phenomenon also known as “digital silos” (Collado, 2024). In this environment, mobilizations like the Generation Z march—diffuse, decentralized, and amplified by social media—can be symbolically captured by discourses that seek to portray progressivism as incapable of guaranteeing security and stability.

The outcome Mexico faces is not only internal erosion but also external ideological pressure. As Reid (2025) warns, the combination of insecurity, low growth, and frustration with progressive policies creates fertile ground for right-wing proposals. The Mexican case is no exception. Indeed, if the perception of insecurity continues to grow and the opposition manages to articulate a discourse of order, the next electoral cycle could open the door to a conservative project, even without a profound institutional crisis.

Recommendations

• Priority attention to verifiable information on security: Given the statistical discrepancies between sources such as the SESNSP and INEGI, and considering that the perception of insecurity has increased from 58.6% to 63% in one year, it is essential that readers evaluate the data using reliable sources and transparent methodologies. Security is currently the most prominent issue, and its interpretation shapes citizens' judgment of the government and political alternatives. Identifying when political actors use statistics as a tool for legitimization—and when significant inconsistencies exist—allows for a more accurate understanding of government performance.

• Critical evaluation of security approaches proposed by different political actors : The analysis of Mexico shows that insecurity has become a vulnerable point for the federal administration and that this void opens space for alternative discourses. The reader should rigorously examine whether the security proposals, both official and opposition, are based on viable strategies, empirical evidence, and comparative experiences. In a context where a conservative shift could emerge as a response to discontent, it is crucial to differentiate between policies that generate structural results and those that are limited to offering solutions with high symbolic impact but low institutional effectiveness.

• Considering the regional context to interpret domestic political behavior : The shift toward conservative projects in Latin America—explained by frustration with security and low economic growth—offers a useful framework for understanding what might happen in Mexico. The reader should bear in mind that national phenomena do not develop in isolation: narratives of order, authority, or a “tough on crime” approach become more appealing in environments where insecurity remains high. Evaluating the Mexican case within this regional pattern allows us to anticipate possible programmatic and electoral realignments.

• Recognizing the role of citizens in a highly salient political landscape : The combination of youth protests, the erosion of security as a central theme, and shifts in presidential approval ratings indicates that citizens are increasingly involved in shaping the political landscape. In this regard, the reader is encouraged to identify how social mobilization, the use of digital networks, and public pressure influence the agenda and electoral competition. Understanding these dynamics helps interpret not only government decisions but also how political actors attempt to capitalize on social discontent.

Conclusion

First, in the short term, security is likely to remain the central focus of government evaluations, given the increased perception of insecurity in recent months and the persistent discrepancies between official crime statistics. Under these conditions, presidential approval could remain vulnerable to thematic decline, especially if localized increases in violence persist in specific states or if new incidents emerge that reignite public concern about organized crime.

Secondly, in the medium term, the persistence of this erosion of security could strengthen the articulation of a heterogeneous social opposition, similar to that expressed in the November 15th march, characterized by its diffuse, digital nature and difficulty in fitting into traditional party structures. If this dynamic consolidates, the political debate could shift towards narratives of order and authority, expanding the space for alternative discourses that capitalize on the gap between government data and citizens' everyday perceptions.

Third, in the long term, Mexico could align itself with the regional pattern of conservative shift identified in Latin America, especially if three factors converge: persistent unease regarding security, the lack of visible results in crime containment, and the capacity of opposition actors to offer simple proposals with high symbolic impact. In this scenario, an institutional collapse would not be necessary to observe a significant political realignment; it would suffice for security to remain the decisive criterion in public evaluation.

Finally, an alternative scenario—though dependent on sustained institutional decisions—would be the stabilization of the debate through greater statistical transparency, targeted territorial interventions, and more prudent communication regarding social mobilizations. This scenario could mitigate the thematic erosion and close off some of the political space currently available to conservative projects, thus altering the prospective trajectory that emerges from the analyzed trends.

References

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